Ori and the Blind Forest is a Little Broken

My first impressions with Ori and the Blind Forest can be summed up with one simple word; amazing. The game was so fluid and natural. Everything had a rhyme and a reason to it. Movement was so clean and fluid and nearly perfect. Yes, that’s it, my first impression of Ori and the Blind Forest was nearly perfect. That was until I came to IT. I can’t move certain rocks.

For some wonderful reason Ori cannot move important rocks. It also turns out you must move these rocks to progress in the game. THE GAME IS BROKEN! I was indeed prepared to throw my Xbox One out the window in frustration. After doing a bit of Googling it turns out this is an issue that you can get around. After many attempts, fails, and deaths, I was finally able to move my damn rock.

This same bug occurred later on in the game when having to move a log. These sorts of bugs are not only annoying, but they also make the player feel dumb. I don’t know how many times I convinced myself that I was terrible at the game and terrible at solving puzzles. Once I took the time and looked up how to actually beat the section I just became even more infuriated with the broken product I was trying to play. Fortunately, I feel like I have passed all the hurdles and can continue.

NOPE!

Of course I was wrong. As it turns out there is yet another huge issue with the game, one that completely breaks progress. As you progress you end up in a “water stage”, the problem isn’t that there is a bunch of water (after all we aren’t … that other gaming site). The problem is ORI CANNOT BREAK THE SURFACE OF THE WATER ONCE YOU JUMP IN. Oh yes, it’s so wonderful you see. In this stage you must jump in and out of the water to collect required items and since this wonderful bug will not allow you to leave the water once swimming, you can never clear the level. The developer, Moon Studios, is aware of the issues and has already located the problem. They have been unable to reproduce this bug in their test environment (according to their Steam page), yet a quick check on Steam or Reddit or any other number of forums will produce a large number of players with the same problem on both PC and Xbox One. Currently the quick fix is to delete your save and start the game over.

It should be noted that this is not an issue that everyone experiences, and in fact, most people have a very seamless and error free experience. These are just random occurrences that are popping up for a number of users.

Quality Control seems to be the theme of issues over the past 6 months. Developers, please take care to check your games. Make sure they actually work. If they don’t work fix them before release, please. As of writing this Moon Studios has confirmed the patch for the rock and water bugs will be shipping soon. It is unfortunate that some of us are stuck waiting for a patch just to complete our game. These are not the only bugs in Ori and the Blind Forest, but they are the really big one’s that I have encountered. Oh well, there is always something else to do until everything is fixed.

Ori and the Blind Forest is a beautiful and stunning piece of playable art. The game is so good that I am not mad that I can’t play it until patched, I think that speaks volumes. Come on Moon Studios, I will be patiently waiting.

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